Page 26 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
shocked as a man across the table, PIDA’s financial adviser, announced himself as PIDA’s financial advisor, Irving Yaverbaum! He was Sam’s brother (and thus Celia Yaverbaum Yaverbaum’s brother-in-law), whom I had never met or even heard of. The Japanese came away believing that Yaverbaum must be somewhat like Smith or Brown.
Wait, you say, you’ve named all these people who were around at the time of your birth, but where was your father? Where was Arnold Yaverbaum? Couldn’t he have controlled the events, used his influence to foreshorten your mother’s labor and make sure that you were well and fairly named? Yes, had he been there. But he wasn’t. Almost nine months to the day prior to the date of my birth, my dad, Arnold Yaver- baum, who was a physician and captain in the United States Army, shipped out to London, where he served in the European Theater of Operations for World War II from February 1944 until approximately nine months after V-E Day, a full fifteen months after I was born.
So, who was to blame? To my mother, the answer was simple. Not Dr. Kurzrach, although the question whether he was Jewish has been hotly debated for years. Certainly not my father. And not even the Yaverbaums, who in most other instances would have won the culpabil- ity prize hands down. No. One man and one man alone was responsible for the disaster in Doctor’s Hospital. Obviously, if any rational person were to give it one moment’s thought, he or she would be bound to con- clude that that man was Adolf Hitler, who, I’m sure that you will agree, was an anti-Semite if ever there was one.
And how did it come to pass that everything did work out well in the end? That remains for these pages to try to show and for the reader to judge, but one thing should be said now, lest the reader become unduly concerned: The clavicle did set, and I did become a pretty good left-handed softball player with a damned good outfield arm.
On the other hand, what if the Yaverbaum baby and the Astor baby had been inadvertently switched in the nursery? Or worse, purposely switched! Would it be a different book? Would I be writing this book? Would someone else be writing it?
•8•